The Dispatch Podcast - January 6 Committee Gets Started

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

The select committee to investigate the January 6 attack held their first hearing on Tuesday, our hosts are here to discuss the substance and politics of what we heard. Plus, the CDC is out with new guidelines recommending vaccinated Americans wear masks indoors in certain parts of the county. Can Jonah contain his anger at the CDC's messaging? And why are opinions on Simone Biles' decision to withdraw from competition a race to the bottom? Show Notes: -The Morning Dispatch recap’s January 6 committee hearing -CDC updated its COVID-19 mask guidance -Simone Biles drops out of Tokyo Olympics team final Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. A lot to discuss this week. We're going to talk about the Select Committee's opening day looking into the events of January 6th. We will talk about the new guidance from the CDC leading to mask mandates reappearing around the country. And we will finish up, of course, with some talk about the Olympics, Simone Biles, and what the guys are thinking. All right, Steve, you kicking us off here. Well, after months and months of debate about whether there would be a serious congressional investigation, what the investigation would look like, who would be on any panel of such an investigation. the Democrat-led Select Committee, looking into the events of January 6th and what proceeded

and followed, started yesterday with gripping testimony on Capitol Hill about what happened, primarily about what happened on that day, on January 6th. You had four police officers, two from the Capitol Police and two from D.C. Metro Police described their experiences, leaving no doubt that the goal of many in the mob or the people at least that they confronted or that they interacted with. their goal was to disrupt the certification process and punish anybody you try to stop them. I think if it wasn't clear before after listening to that testimony, it's clear now these protesters, these rioters, I will still call them insurrectionists, wanted to disrupt the peaceful transfer

of power. Sarah, start with you. What struck you as you watched the hearing yesterday and thought about it in the aftermath. Did you learn anything new, or did you think about what you'd already known in a new way, or was this mostly just a dramatic rehash of stuff we've already been over? Can I pick all of the above? So I watched it from start to finish, and let me pick out each of those things. So, one, I did learn some new things. Obviously, anytime you're hearing someone's personal experience, you're learning

new things. I think what I was most sort of pushed back by in my chair was, there was a police officer testifying who was black, and he was wearing his uniform, and they were shouting the N-word at him. And for some reason, that struck me visually. I was, I could picture that happening and how almost historical that is in so many ways. You know, there was, there was, was a time in this country right after the Civil War when Reconstruction was at least somewhat functional when there were black officers, black congressmen, black senators, black appointed officials with real political power and clout in their communities. And when Reconstruction started to fall apart, that is sort of a picture that comes up in my mind of you're wearing the

uniform of your community, of your country, et cetera. And yet nobody is seeing that. um so that that really was something for me that that pushed me back in my chair a little uh i thought all the officers testimony was important to give context to what it was like on that day make you feel like you were there you know all of us certainly i was sitting in my kitchen just glued to the tv all day but we didn't have cameras inside you didn't fully know what was going on that day you just knew things were bad that they had the potential to be really, really bad. So hearing from them, I thought, was valuable. That being said, there were also things that we certainly already knew. We knew that there was a

angry mob. We knew that they were able to breach the capital. And we didn't really learn anything more about why that was able to happen, what was known ahead of time, really. But that's what this committee in theory will also look into. That wasn't what yesterday was about. And then there were the people asking questions, and I want to talk a little bit more about the politics of that in David's topic. But, you know, compared to most congressional hearings, the amount of showboating was at an all-time low. Now, that's not to say there wasn't any. There was some, of course, because this is Congress. But like, wow, it was like there were adults in the room and they were asking questions and listening. Huh, that was interesting.

So, yeah, I mean, I felt like it was worthwhile to watch and that, you know, I was one of the few people actually watching the whole thing because, again, the Republicans had largely discredited it for reasons we can get into it a bit. Yeah, David, just to pick up on a point that Sarah made there, clearly the focus of this first hearing was on what happened in the capital. itself and the personal experiences of these four officers to, I think, help the committee begin both investigating what happened, what led to their experiences, but also to help them tell the story of that day. But there are, as Sarah suggests, lots and lots of other questions. Liz Cheney, one of the two Republicans on the committee, said this,

we must know what happened every minute of that day in the White House, every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to during and after the attack. So the committee has subpoena power and seems intent on using it. Do you have any confidence that we'll get those details that Cheney says are so important for us to have? and can White House, conformal White House officials and congressional Trump backers, she suggested that Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and others might be material witnesses, can they simply refuse to comply with attempts to compel their testimony? What do you expect in terms of what we're likely to get from the panel? Well, I mean, I think as a practical matter, a lot depends on which records are now in the hands of the Biden administration. versus the records that are in the hands

of former Trump administration officials. So, you know, if you're talking about call logs, phone logs, emails, any sort of official record that has an electronic trail or a paper trail that the Biden administration would now have custody of,

well, I think that they'll be quite cooperative in handing over records from the prior administration. But if you're talking about pulling records from, say, a Jim Jordan or you're talking about pulling records from former Trump administration officials. Of course, they're going to have their privileges against self-incrimination if they want

to invoke any of them. But then also, the bottom line is congressional subpoenas are often flouted. There's not as much teeth to congressional subpoena. And so if you want to defy Congress, it's easier to defy Congress, say, than it is to defy a grand jury. So I'm not necessarily all that confident that if you're talking about the cooperation, or I'm not confident at all if you're talking about the cooperation of, say, Jim Jordan or a recalcitrant, former Trump administration official, that you're going to get a lot. But I do think that it is going to be very interesting to see sort of what records are available

that are within the custody of the current administration, that are legacy records from the previous administration. That will be very, very interesting. So, you know, these congressional select committees, they can get a lot. They can get a lot of information. But, you know, one thing that we have seen and one thing that's sort of distressing that we have seen over the last many years is that Congress doesn't have as many tools to get to the bottom of a situation as, you know, perhaps. it should. But, you know, look, going back to yesterday, I think it was really important to lay the foundation of what occurred so that people have sort of a picture of the reality of what

occurred. Not everyone's like us. Not everyone has seen all of this footage. Not everyone has seen body camera footage. Not everyone has seen the footage of officers being crushed and screaming and beaten and maced and all of that. And so, you know, we've got a situation where the public has a big disparity of information between those who've paid a lot of attention and those have paid a little attention and this laid a foundation that maybe might do a little bit

in this very big country to address that, that sort of ignorance about what occurred. But bottom line is, you know, so much of, so much it's going to depend on what records exist that the Biden administration

has its hands on. Yeah, Jonah, to David's point, Well, the recurring thought I had the entire time, I've mostly listened, I've watched a little, but I mostly listened to the testimony yesterday was, this is incredibly compelling testimony. And anybody who's watching this or listening to it or paying attention and taking the time to process the details of what's happening can't help but come away from these hearings, from this hearing, thinking, geez, this really was an attempt to stop the certification. I mean, this was an attempt to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But the thought that I had again and again and again was the very people who most need to hear that are not watching the hearing. They're not paying attention to this. They don't want those facts.

They don't care about it. They would stick their, you know, sooner stick their fingers in their ears and shout la, la, la, la, la, to avoid taking any of this in. One thing that was interesting to me, and I don't want to necessarily put you on the spot on this. this, but I will. You can just dodge if you want. You know, Fox News, our Fox News covered the hearings. Our colleague Brett Baer called them important after watching some of them after the coverage. And, you know, there was basically sort of a seriousness in the way that Fox covered the hearings

themselves and the immediate aftermath. Then, of course, at night, the opinion hosts went in a very very, different direction. But I thought it was interesting and potentially important that Fox covered the hearings. Is this likely, as this proceeds, Republicans are, and David will get into this in greater detail, but Republicans are obviously doing everything they can to just portray this as a hopelessly partisan committee, a hopelessly partisan investigation. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsiger, however probable it might seem, are Pelosi Republicans, at least Stefanik, called Liz Cheney, a Pelosi pawn, you know, Republicans are going to cast this as partisan. Does any of this actually

breakthrough? Yeah, I'm going to save some of my outrage for the, on these matters for the second segment, but I think it does break through. And I think one sign that it's breaking through, I mean, not in huge degree, obviously. People are pretty locked into their priors and a lot of this stuff. But at the margins, and the margins matter. Remember, the Republican Party right now is a minority party in this country. Donald Trump, you know, couldn't break 50% in approval, never mind, you know, in the election.

And so every 1% gets you further away from being a majority party, which is really significant. And if it didn't matter at all, you wouldn't see the kind of derision and scorn heaped on these hearings from not only the, you know, Kevin McCarthy and Elise DeFonick,

but from the late night or from the prime time fox people like if it truly didn't matter they wouldn't you know laur ingram would not have offered uh awarded different acting prizes to uh the different the the tests of the cops who were testifying uh people like uh we don't need to name her but this writer for american greatness wouldn't be going around calling these cops crisis actors if they didn't feel like, you know, the, the obvious narrative, if they didn't feel like people might believe that if people believe their lying eyes, we'd be in trouble. And, um, and that's why Representative Clyde has to stick to his statement that this was indistinguishable from a tourist visit, um, and all the rest. The, the scope and intensity of the denial is proof

of how much it actually could matter. That said, I think these, the hearings, just go back to the original question, the hearings will be a bust if they, if the, if the hearing of yesterday is an indication

of what the entire process will be like. I agree, it was, it was important to sort of recognize these officers. It was important to level set. It was important to get this story out there. I personally think that there was too much emoting and crying. um you know particularly from adam kinsinger i thought i mean i think it was sincere but just the

the the lacrimosity of it all i think gave um too much ammo to a bunch of jerks on this stuff um that's and also i just would prefer more outrage than than um than saccharin kind of stuff but if so going forward they don't get call logs and if they don't actually convey new information And if instead they bungle this the way the Democrats, I think, bungled the impeachment by just thinking the video speaks for itself and that's all you need to know rather than actually doing fact finding, then the thing will be a bust because the evidentiary standard in our politics today for being a partisan waste of time boils down to whether or not you impart meaningful new information. and if they don't impart meaningful new information, then it will be easily cast as a waste of time. I think, I mean, we should just underline that and put an exclamation point next to it, Jonah.

If they don't uncover new information, it won't break through. If they don't uncover new information, there won't be a way we look back at this historically, this being the committee. They have to actually do something beyond what all, you know, there's 564 people roughly, who were indicted for their role in this. Some of those will go to trial.

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That's ethos.com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. David, let's talk the politics of this, which is a whole different ball o' wax. Yeah. So, um, there's this poll that exists. And, you know, with all of the, we should just have every poll begin with, with all of the standard Sarah caveats regarding polling. Thank you. It has favorability and unfavorability ratings for Republicans. Of course, Donald Trump is at the very top. This is a morning consult Politico poll. 84% of Republicans have a favorable view of him. 15% have an unfavorable view of him. and then all the way down at the bottom is Liz Cheney with a 15% favorability rating

and a 53% negative unfavorable rating. We don't have to do a whole lot of math there to say that she's pretty underwater. And you know who's not underwater? Can I quote the Hamilton line from Aaron Burr, where she says, Burr, you disgust me. And he says, ah, so you've discussed me. Like, for Liz Janie, that's, that's some high name ID right there. That's some high name ID. Yes, it is. You know, now what's interesting is for all of the talk that you see on political media of Marjorie Taylor, Green, and Matt Gates, they still have a majority of people don't have any opinion one way or the

other. So that should tell you something about how many, what percentage of American really pay close attention to all of this stuff, but to the extent that people have opinions of Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green, there's still a little bit to the good. There's still a little bit to the positive amongst Republicans. Marjorie Taylor Green is at plus nine. Matt Gates is at plus five.

And so it strikes me, and let me just tee this right back to Jonah because he was warming up in the bullpen anyway on this, is that the prime directive here for Republicans, is it taking on the left? That's the prime directive. And in this time of negative partisanship, and there's just, is there any room at all

for Republican introspection on this issue, or is the prime directive just the prime directive? And if you're going to be Liz Cheney, if you're going to be Adam Kinsinger, if you're going to be anyone of the very small minority of Republicans who has really stood up and aggressively declared, the January 6th riot and aggressively declared that they want to get to the bottom of the January 6th riot.

Is there a future for them? Are they violating the prime directive? Where are we going from here? Yeah. So Kevin McCarthy's statement about the Pelosi Republicans, I think encapsulates this distinction that I have been focusing on for several years now. It's why I call my podcast The Remnant. It's a regular theme of all my stuff.

That there's a difference between the conservative movement and the Republican Party. That the Republican Party is an instrument for achieving ends. It is a means to ends. Conservative movement is about a coherent set of ideas. You support the Republican Party because it's the more conservative of the two parties. Yada, yada, yada.

There's always been this tension. There's always been, you know, how far do we back, for prudential reasons, a party that we only get a half a loaf or two-thirds of a loaf or whatever. Blah, blah, blah. We don't need to rehash all that. The way you judge all political movements,

all political institutions is not by what they say they believe, but by what they prioritize. If I used to make jokes all the time about the Libertarian Party, it's like, yeah, yeah, it's fine. They believe in privatizing prisons and police forces, but the things that puts asses in the seats is legalizing pot, right?

And that's the thing they care about. That's the thing they raise money off of. That's the thing they push. when you reduce what the Republican Party believes to its testing point, it used to be people would say, oh, it was, you know, the one thing they won't ever compromise on is tax cuts. Now, according to the logic of Pelosi Republican thing, is that the one thing that is definitional to you as a Republican right now

is whether or not you're actually interested in whether or not and how the President of the United States was implicated in inviting a violent mob to interfere with an election. and if you were in favor of getting to the facts on that, that means you're not really a Republican. You can be pro-choice. You can be, you can talk about, you know, you can hang out with various gropers and other, you know,

coprophagic, you know, members of the lowest phyelums of the alt-right. And that's fine. You can talk, you know, you can do all the racist stuff. You can talk about Jewish space lasers. You can say that there were just tourists who were touring the capital. But my God, if you, if you actually. actually say that part of your definition of your job, part of your job description is to actually want to get to the bottom of whether it's an insurrection or if it's just a deliberate

riot to interfere with the process of counting an election. If that's what you want to do, then you're not really Republican. You are an outsider. And so, I mean, Liz Cheney has a vastly more conservative record than Elise Daphonic, but Elise Daphonic has a vastly more pliable spine, and that's what counts. And to watch Jim Jordan yesterday on Special Report, and at least DeFonic yesterday as well, try to pin the riot on Nancy Pelosi because she didn't do enough to defend the Capitol in advance without mentioning that the reason why the Capitol needed to be defended was because the President of the United States invited the mob to attack the Capitol.

details details Jonah and whenever whenever Brett tried to refocus it on that point is look the only people who are being who deserve blame are the people who committed the violence which again were the people of the president of the United States invited to commit the violence and then he turns around and says but it's really Nancy Pelosi for not being prepared to defend against the people

that the president invited and I really wish the one question I wish Brett had leveled at him was when he says the wrong were the people who did all of these bad things, it would have been nice to get a little drive a little wedge in there and ask, okay, so you disagree with your colleagues who call the people who've been arrested

political prisoners? Because that's the next step here, is that they didn't do anything wrong, and they are, in fact, the Alexander Soljanitzin's of our age, which is among the most grotesque. We have an enormous number of people out there who got their

undergarments over their head because some dude approached Chucker Carlson in a store in Montana and said mean things to him and now are making fun of cops who were beaten with American flags

and concussed and tasered and almost killed and they're like, what wimps? Why are they whining? Oh, let's give them another Oscar for their performance.

The cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy here is maddening to me. So Steve has what about us has what aboutism won the day on the on the right and and by that i mean well the media didn't freak out about the riots in the summer the media didn't freak out about the attacks on the you know the post office or the

courthouse in portland the media didn't freak out about the mob surrounding the white house in the summer so this freak out over the capital uh riot is just partisanship it's just partisanship And I've heard a lot of this around with people I'm around. They say, well, you know, where's the Congressional Select Committee about the riots this summer? And so it just feels all partisan to them. Has that argument won, even amongst people who say, of course I think what happened on January 6th was wrong, but where's the Select Committee about Portland? Yeah, I'm not sure I would say the argument has won, but I do think it resonates. And I think it resonates in part for a reason. The critique of the media on the coverage of the BLM riots and violence is a good critique. Like, it's fair. I think the media fell down on that. They were, most of the stories that I read throughout that time were more sympathetic to want destruction of property, to violence. against people, there was a sort of justification of this, there was a tone of rationalization

and justification that ran throughout the coverage that I think was frustrating to a lot of people, including people who are the victims of the violence and whose stores were destroyed. So there is a point to be made there. However, I don't think that you can then say, ah, so the, you know, the attack, on the Capitol is really no big deal, and we don't really care about it that much. I think this is a really dangerous moment for the Republican Party, because you're seeing the Republican Party leadership in the Senate, in effect, shrug its shoulders. Like, eh, whatever, bad day, too bad. You know, these are the same people who directly indicted Trump for what happened on that day in their,

in their speeches in the aftermath of the attacks. Now, in effect, shrugging their shoulders, Yeah, it was bad, but really we need to move on because, you know, there's an election in November of 2022. And in the House Republican leadership, it's even worse. Kevin McCarthy is, I mean, you have to stop and think about this. And every once in a while, it's like one of these things just sort of strikes you like a bolt of lightning. Kevin McCarthy and the Republican leadership are actively in public at least, contemplating, punishing Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger for participating in this committee.

Both Republicans. You know, there are stories privately, yeah, they really don't want to get into that. It would be messy. But the stories are all about the practical problems that going after Cheney and Kinsiger would present, not about the substance of it. Meanwhile, you have people like Matt Gates,

Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gossar, and others who are saying and doing on a daily basis the craziest stuff. I mean, Paul Gossar is an insurrectionist sympathizer. That is not an overstatement. That's what he is. He's seeking to make a martyr out of Ashley Babbitt, who was among the insurrectionists. You have him, you know, regularly promoting Nick Fuentes, who is an open racist, not just a bad alt writer who tiptoes around racist things or dog whistles. This guy's an open racist. He like makes jokes about the Holocaust. It's a really bad guy. But that doesn't get any real punishment from Kevin McCarthy in the House Republican leadership. And the only conclusion you can draw is that McCarthy, I mean, there are several conclusions you should, you can draw. I don't

want to restrict it. One of the obvious conclusions is that Kevin McCarthy and his colleagues are okay with the kind of bullshit that comes from Paul Gossar and these others. And they can't stomach the kinds of arguments that Liz Cheney and others are making, despite the fact that McCarthy himself used to make those arguments for a very brief period of time. The other conclusion I think you can draw off from that is that they're just totally afraid of their voters. And they don't want to, they don't want to risk pissing off their voters. But, and here's where I'll stop, there's a CBS poll out yesterday about January 6th. And among Republicans, the numbers are shifting a little bit, but this poll taken July 14th to July 17th, among Republicans,

people who strongly disapprove of the folks who forced their way into the capital, capital, 39%. People who somewhat disapprove 35%. So 74% of Republicans, three out of four Republicans, either somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove, the highest number is strongly disapprove of what happened. And yet you have these Republicans who will say, oh, I regret what happened to the Capitol police officers. But then they spend the rest of their time sort of winking and nodding at the people who would support these or try to make martyrs out of the the folks who crashed the Capitol. That's a pretty big gap. And I think that Republicans are taking tremendous risks that they will be seen as the party of insurrectionist sympathizers.

And it will be hard not to conclude that that perception is right unless they change course. Okay, David, I have a different take. I was going to say, Sarah, I'm going to give you an opportunity to disagree with Steve. Is this actually dangerous for Republicans, or does it not really matter? So, okay, first of all, things that Steve said, like, resonated in my heart. I, you know, I think it is hilarious in all the bad ways that the Republican Party, the party of the union is, at its birth, is now going to be the party of disunion in so many ways. And I was on ABC yesterday after the hearing concluded, and a congressman named Matt Rosendale, I believe was his name from Montana, was being interviewed right before our panel went on.

And he basically said that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger should be, you know, he'd not kicked out of the Republican Party. He said they're not in the Republican Party because, and this is a paraphrase, but not too far off, it'd be like if they were supposed to be on your sports team and then they went over to the other team, your opponents, and told them all of your plays and your secrets. You wouldn't still consider them part of your sports team. Whoa, dude.

I have so many problems with that analogy, like so, so many as a general matter, but definitely as it applies to the events of January 6 in this select committee, That's bonkers town that you think, A, this is a sports game, and B, the goal here is to beat the other side about January 6th. Okay, yeah. So those are all the ways that I agree with Steve in my heart, you know? But let me talk about why Steve's wrong. I think that Nancy Pelosi made a rare strategic error because I think Nancy Pelosi is one of the smartest political creatures

out there. I think she is a genius strategist. But in this case, she made a few blunders because she is deeply partisan. That's how she's come into this business. She's been that way her whole life. Normally it serves her actually pretty well in navigating some of these situations, it didn't hear. You start at the very beginning after January 6th, when discussions of a 9-11-style commission started. And she, from that moment, was trying to make it more partisan than it needed to be instead of just having sort of this very open-ended, yeah, yeah, it'll be bipartisan, whatever, let's just get the commission going. That gave Republicans what they needed to pull back and say, no, she wants this to be partisan. She wants the

staff to be partisan, whatever. She ended up backing away from those things, but it was too late. She'd already given them the talking point. So then you fast forward to this select committee, McCarthy brings her five names. She rejects two of them, Jordan and Banks. He then pulls all five, which she had to know would be the result. She wanted that to happen because I think she thought it would make McCarthy look petulant, which I don't think it did, actually. I don't think that accomplished what she wanted it to. But regardless, the end result is that she now has a committee that she's calling bipartisan because she has Cheney and Kinsinger, but that no one's really going to engage with. The Republicans are simply, as we saw, going to say, I didn't watch

it and not really answer any questions about it. And if the goal was to tie this around Republicans next, then what you actually wanted was Jordan and Banks there be clowning themselves. attacking police officers, et cetera, and she lost that opportunity and for no real upside. And then lastly, let me then criticize Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. So they were invited to join the committee by Nancy Pelosi. Great. You were invited to join so that she could say it was bipartisan, but you then had an opportunity to represent the legitimate concerns of the.

Republican caucus and at least be a different voice. And at least what we saw yesterday, and we have, I mean, there is a long way to go in this. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger did not represent a different voice in that room at all. If I had put, you know, paper bags over people's heads or disguise their voices or something, you would not have known that they were from any different political party coming out this from any different perspective. And one of the things that, you know, I have often mentioned with Liz Cheney is she has a conservative voting record than the people who are criticizing her often, always? I mean,

nearly always. I want to see that as these hearings continue. I want to see Liz Cheney say, you know, okay, what happened that day was bad, but let's talk about some of the things that the Democrats don't want to talk about, that the Republicans are bringing up that are legitimate about how we got to that point that day. And so missed opportunity from Cheney and Kinsinger to push back on some of their critics. Missed opportunity from Pelosi to actually elevate these hearings

and make Republicans engage with the hearings. So I politically think this will all be really irrelevant and it won't hurt Republicans one bit because it does not have credibility with Republicans and I think that is that is Nancy Pelosi's fault. Okay, quick follow up on that. I hear you.

I hear you. But here's what I wonder. What I wonder is, you know, there's a reason why a criminal defendant needs a defense attorney. If you had a criminal trial where it was all prosecution, the conviction rate would be even higher than it is. if you have a January 6th commission and you don't actually have that dissenting voice there

doesn't that mean that the dissenting message doesn't get out and that only the prosecution message about what happened on January 6th is it resonates I mean aside from the hits in Fox News later that evening which you know is just a sliver of the base So I just wonder about that. If you're talking about a consistent one point of view, sort of prosecuting the severity of this and Republican complicity in it, isn't that kind of like a criminal prosecution with no defense attorney? I am not saying that Liz Cheney needs to be there saying this was no big deal like Republicans. Some Republicans are saying.

I'm saying she needs to, you know, for instance, yesterday with the officers, you know, Kinsinger, as Jonah pointed out at moments, felt a little over the top. But Liz Cheney as well, there was a lot of how did that make you feel instead of, were you told in advance by your superior officers that there could be problems that day? What training did you receive in advance of that to defend the capital? again, you know, like, questions that could lay the groundwork for different conversations coming up, not, this was no big deal, they were tourists. I don't mean that dissenting voice.

I mean, a more substantive and less dramatic reenactment. Yeah, no, I mean, I guess my point is that if you're, if you have, you. have a committee that doesn't have a voice that is designed to poke holes in the committee's work like a Jim Jordan would. I guess my question is, is the absence of Jim Jordan. Now, Jim Jordan would come across as a jerk to the officers, but the exclusion of those individuals, it seems to me is going to in the exclusion and McCarthy pulling everybody

does I just question the wisdom of that move because what it does is it leads the Democrats and people are committed to sort of uncovering the severity of January 6th in total control of the proceedings with no alternative voice and I was just wondering if that and I'm not saying the alternative voice has credibility

but if you're wanting to be the party that's minimizing this, you don't have any voice at all on this. Oh, but then also you don't engage with it at all. They will not, like, you saw some on Fox News yesterday. I don't think you'll see it again. And I'm not sure the mainstream media will cover it anymore because there's no conflict. The mainstream media will cover it.

The mainstream media will definitely cover it. It's a bipartisan committee now. It's a bipartisan committee now. But, you know. But, Steve, there's no news there. You have all the networks cover it. And you said earlier that you thought there was news. I mean, I think there was news yesterday. You know, I'm open to the possibility that we don't have the committee uncover a lot of new information.

I think David's skepticism about the ability to get their hands on records that Trump folks don't want them to is right. But it's hard for me to imagine that the mainstream media won't cover this with eagerness and in a sort of fulsome way. And imagine if there were Jim Jordan and Banks sitting there making fireworks every day, then yeah, I think they would cover it. But if it's just a whole bunch of people agreeing with each other, you know, there was a bad, you know. But historically, the conflict comes from the witnesses, right? Historically, when big committees, you bring someone from the Trump administration and you put them in the hot seat. And that's where the conflict come from. I mean, it's only because we live in at such a crappy, dumb time that the only, the only one.

expectation of fireworks now is between Congress people rather than between the witnesses in the hot seat. But I take your point. I think you're largely right on on the fact that there is there is room for Liz Cheney or Adam can or for actually neither of them. But some of the ones who, you know, that Pelosi didn't kick off and that at McCarthy pulled, I can't remember their hands. Look, I think. everyone knows I'm on record. I think Trump should have been rightfully impeached for this. I think he should have been impeached on January 7th. I think he should have been convicted on January 8th for what he did. What he did was outrageous and disgusting and the defenses of it are outrageous and disgusting

and strong letter to follow. That said, you hear a lot of people say, a lot of people, a lot of Congress people say we were just hours away from the end of democracy in America. And I just don't believe that that's true. Like, it would have been, it would have made things worse. It would have imperiled democracy more than it was already imperiled. But if, if Mike Pence, heaven forbid, had agreed to cave to Donald Trump and send these things back to legislatures, I don't think that you could then say we would be in a dictatorship. Nor do I think if these, I mean, the weird historic irony and God bless that thank God it didn't happen. But the weird

historic irony here is that if these jackasses who had stormed the Capitol had been more successful if they had in fact zip tied a bunch of Congress people or I don't know, again heaven forbid hung Mike Pence that would have been worse for Trump world

right? That would have been worse for all these people and the logic of the Democrats and a lot of their rhetoric is like a but for the grace of God and and a few brave capital police officers steering a crowd the other way, America would have been over. And I don't think,

I'm not saying that things wouldn't have gotten really, really ugly and contentious and maybe even more violent, but I do think that at the end of the day, a lot of these Republicans who think that they can dodge the responsibility and the seriousness of all this, they think that because nothing like that happened.

And I think there are a lot of closet normals up there who would say, okay, who would have done what Lindsey Graham did, that day or the day after and stuck with it if things had been worse. And I think there's a way to sort of calibrate the rhetoric on this stuff that lends credibility to the right Republican position, which is this thing was bad enough on its own merits. We don't have to describe it as if, you know, 10,000 Huns storming the Capitol represented, you know, half the country and they were going to throw us into the dark night of tyranny if they had succeeded.

We can just simply say, President Trump tried to steal the election and he unleashed a mob to do it. And that's bad enough. And I think some of that kind of pushback would lend credibility to Republicans. And also, Jim Jordan, there's a reason why he keeps focusing on Nancy Pelosi not being prepared and all that kind of stuff. There's probably some truth to that. I have no problem whatsoever throwing Nancy Pelosi under the bus in this process. by all means do that as well as the Trump White House. Like there'll be a good way for the Republicans to do linkage there.

Let's get to the bottom of what Nancy Pelosi said and did. And let's get to the bottom of why the Pentagon took so long to respond to this. And why President Trump took so long to respond to us. That would make, that's a bipartisan mode of inquiry. And I would be, I would be shocked if Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsiger don't push to have that scrutinized. I mean, I think that's a, that is a totally fair question. I think it's a, it wouldn't be.

a serious investigation if they didn't take a look at what was happening in the days before as it relates to requests for security and the security posture. But I don't understand just to go back and respond to Sarah's critique of my argument. I don't understand why it's incumbent on Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsiger to be the voice of the Republicans on a partisan basis in this. I mean, as we pointed out, Republicans have cast them aside anyway. And the entire point of their participation in this process is to take it from a partisan fight and to try to make it a serious investigation. I mean, I have my, we talk a lot about Nancy Pelosi starting the politicization of this process. I do think she bears a lot of the blame for the fact that there is not an independent commission on this.

But it's not up to Liz Cheney to be the voice of Republicans who are. all day, every day, both trashing her and making up BS excuses for what happened on that day. I mean, you look at the kinds of comments that came from Kevin McCarthy, Elise Stefanik, and sort of the clown show caucus on the Republican Party over the last couple days. They're not people to be taken seriously. She doesn't have any obligation to be their voice in this process. They pulled themselves from the investigation. that's as much as they should get.

She says she is still a Republican. She is supposed to be there speaking on behalf of her constituency of Republican voters, not other Congress people. If she wants Republican voters to engage with this commission, then she needs to sound like- She's there to find the truth. She's there to find the truth. I don't think she has to please Republican voters

to participate in this commission and be an effective participant. She doesn't. unless she wants Republican voters to engage with what the commission finds. That's all. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Yannex. All right. Jonah, CDC, mask mandate. yikes yeah I'm not doing it nope I'm just not doing it

I'm sorry like this mask stuff I've been I'll calm down I'll wrap it a pack the CDC has announced that it wants people to start wearing masks again

wherever there are spikes in cases and their definition of spikes in cases basically means everywhere, but, you know, some remote islands off the coast of Maine and the International Space Station. And they want you to wear them indoors. They want you to wear them around kids.

There was some reporting that doesn't seem to quite have panned out from the, from Yomishal Senator of the New York Times yesterday, that they were going to say they wanted parents of kids younger than 12 to wear masks at home. and it doesn't sound like that's where they're going but it does sound like we are sliding back into

masks and mask mandates maybe probably not lockdowns and perhaps various mandates to get vaccinated so I'll throw this to Steve, who has always been a bit more concerned about COVID than I have.

Is this a sign of systemic failure? Or is this just sound responsible science doing its work? Yeah, it's bad. The CDC has sort of made a mockery of itself. And let me set aside the second part of your question there about whether it's based on sound science and just look at where the CDC is right now, almost nobody trusts the CDC. It's no longer the case, as it was at the front end of the pandemic, that you can say,

the CDC offers guidance that says this, and people will say, gosh, it's the CDC that must be the consensus of a lot of really smart people who are looking out for our best interests. Therefore, we should follow it. Now, just describing the reality of the situation, a new CDC, guidance comes out and lots of people, not just the inveterate skeptics, say, I'm not sure if I should believe that. And I will say having, you know, read a lot about the delta variant, a lot about what we can do to protect ourselves, a lot about the possibility of vaccine boosters, a lot about the skepticism of vaccine hesitant people, a lot about the science. I don't know what to believe. I mean,

I do this for a living, right? I read this stuff endlessly. I edit our own work on this stuff. I can't tell you what's right at this point. But I can't tell you that people are absolutely sick of wearing these masks. They're done with it. And I don't know, you know, there's an argument that the CDC doing what it's doing, telling vaccinated people that they have to go back to wearing masks will inevitably result in more vaccine hesitancy on the part of people who are vaccine hesitant and might, in fact, be counterproductive, might lead to fewer people getting vaccinated. I don't know that we know that yet. It seems plausible that that could be one unintended consequence here.

But whatever the case is, the CDC is making these decisions to, day that are directly counter to the guidance it was giving two weeks ago without any apparent without if there's new science that rationalizes that justifies this dramatic change of position this 180 they haven't shared it with the public in a way that the public can understand and I think that's a tragedy so um Sarah one of the reasons why I would argue that this is reflective of a general failure and I don't mean just a general failure by the public health community

though I agree entirely with Stephen on that and I don't mean it just a general failure by political leaders and institutional leaders and media figures and all of that I don't mean it's a failure in there but also that oh absolutely absolutely if I was czar everybody would be Busting rocks in central Ohio for a year as punishment.

But I'm speaking the American people. And I think that one of the ways that the media has done a disservice on all of this is that if you look at in numerical terms, so it's weird, there's this weird irony. Statistically, if you are a core Trump voter, you are less likely to be vaccinated. But if you haven't been vaccinated, you are more likely to live in a large urban area. because, and not have been a Trump voter, just because the places where you were most likely be a Trump voter are sparsely populated in rural. And even though big cities and big counties have great vaccination rates, if you've got 10 million people in a county and 70% are vaccinated,

that leaves 3 million people, which is larger than these rural Trump counties who haven't been vaccinated. And the large number of those people are African American, they're Hispanic, they're democratic voters and the way the media has focused this as almost entirely is through a partisan lens of the problem here are these Neanderthal Trumpers

rather than actually and then coddling communities of color by saying they have every reason to be skeptical of vaccines because of their long history blah blah blah blah blah blah you have this situation where resources and efforts

and rhetoric have not been aimed appropriately and so I have those sort of a pox on all your houses attitude about all of this stuff. So I guess the question is putting the question of kids aside for two seconds. Why should I give a rat's ass at this point if I'm vaccinated, if I infect someone who has every opportunity to get vaccinated and refuses to do so, right? I mean, if you refuse to get vaccinated and I have to wear a mask to protect you, why does that burden fall on me rather than them?

And what are the politics of that? Yeah, so 100% as Axios put it this morning, the Biden administration is essentially asking vaccinated Americans to help save the unvaccinated from themselves. Nope, people don't want to do that. No way. And people aren't going to do it. But I don't think you can separate out the kid question, as you just tried to do, because there is no world in which you can simply not mask to not worry about the adults, but then protect kids. And right now, the vaccine is being administered to kids over the age of 12. They have said for five to 12, they think they're reasonably close by the end of the year. They've said for kids under five, like mine, they don't know. Eventually he'll turn five,

right? So I guess that'll handle itself. And I struggle with this. I don't know how to navigate the world right now where there are still so many unvaccinated people. The Delta variant is more transmissible, even if it is not more deadly. It is transmissible by breakthrough cases. And that, to Steve's point, I agree that they maybe haven't done a good job discussing why they suddenly did this 180 about face.

But it absolutely is that breakthrough cases are way more contagious than they thought they were. They thought if you were vaccinated and still got COVID, like, okay, you're less likely to be hospitalized. You're basically not going to die, and you're not going to give it to other people. That turns out with a Delta variant, not to be true. You are the same amount of contagious whether you're vaccinated or not. And so when it comes to kids, that's a scary prospect. And so, you know, do I take my son to Walmart?

Well, I did this week. I don't know whether I should feel comfortable with that. And I guess having everyone wear masks again would make me feel a little more comfortable taking him places at the same time. I'm kind of with Jonah. I don't think that it should be on me because you chose to not get vaccinated.

Very frustrating. When you have this huge disparity of fault, if you will, between adults and children. I don't know. so david what the hell no um no um no i you the one of the reasons i mean i think the messaging on this has all been so bad no one has been saying like i suspect that a large number of the unvaccinated are fall into one of two camps either they hear that this is still under emergency use authorization

and they think that it hasn't been actually all the tires haven't been kicked and if and I I think it's weird that the FDA won't expedite this or two they think they've already had it so they think they're already immune

and we've heard zero messaging really from politicians or public health officials saying hey look I understand you think you're immune you're not really get the vaccine why I mean we're 18 months into this why are we still why are we backsliding and and and to get to your negative polarization stuff

from the earlier thing is polarization ruining this this too wait can I also add a footnote David before the footnote is the FDA turning out to be what I would call accidentally right on thalidomide and not approving it and then it turned out to cause birth defects I think has killed more people in this country because now the FDA thinks, like, ah, because we slow-rolled thalidomide for 10 years, and then we're proven right to not approve it, again, which I think was largely accidental. They slow-roll everything in the hopes that they're saving lives without really being able to calculate the risk of the slow roll in the first place of all these drugs that could be saving lives the whole time. You know, we've got a polarization issue here,

But again, as you were noting earlier, Jonah, that, you know, this is not something that while if you're looking at the heavily Republican counties are among the least likely to have the highest rates of vaccinations, that's absolutely true. We also know that there are minority communities that are more vaccine reluctant. So it doesn't all break down neatly on partisan lines. But the thing that I would say, I just keep going back to this thought that I had at the beginning of the pandemic. And this attaches itself to a lot of ways in which we responded to this. And it was going to be a, from the beginning, it was clear that this was a disease that was going to require a high trust response in a low trust time. We are in a period of time of massive distrust of institutions, just massive distrust. And quite frankly, as we've walked through some of the CDC stuff, some of that distrust is earned distrust.

and I'm around a lot of vaccine hesitant folks. I've talked to a lot of vaccine hesitant folks. And the thing I think that people need to understand is that there is, when you're talking about the reasons for the hesitancy, you're often playing whack-a-mole. It isn't the case that you say, okay, well, now the FDA has approved it. Now take it. Oh, great. That was the last thing I was waiting for.

It is that the rationalization for the vaccine hesitancy attaches to different things. And so when one issue is addressed, another issue rises. And I think the fact of the matter is that we never had a tremendously good strategy for dealing with vaccine hesitancy, and maybe because there wasn't ever going to be a tremendous strategy for vaccine hesitancy because this vaccine was coming into a time period in American history where massive numbers of people have deeply baked in distrust. It doesn't mean you don't try. Doesn't mean there aren't some messages that are better than others on the margins.

But part of me really does wonder if when you overlay a vaccine on top of deep distrust, some of it driven by the negative polarization. But, you know, there's this really interesting interview I heard, oh, gosh, I'm blanking on their names, the two Washington Post writers who wrote about the last year of the Trump presidency. Phil Rucker and Carol Lennox? Yes, yes, yes. And they were even talking about this concept of, well, Trump could have changed this whole dynamic. And their talk was about masks. and they said, no, not necessarily.

It isn't necessarily the case that Trump was in command of his base at all times. It's also the case that he had his finger on the pulse of the base, and he knew what would be too much for them or too far for them and wouldn't do that. And he had a sense that the base did not want to see him in a mask, that him masking and being very conscientious, of masking would have been not what his base would have wanted. Rather than it being this idea that a lot of people have that the base just saluted and did whatever Trump said, part of the loyalty of the base had to Trump was he in many ways saluted and did what they said. And so I think

that we're latching into sort of a very, very, very deep distrust here. And we've hit that phase. Lots of people are frustrated about it. And nobody has a particularly great idea about what to do about it. All right. Last topic, we don't have to spend too long on this, but I just want to let you all know that I have taken away my own feminist ally card because I didn't even know

that, in fact, the Olympics were mandating the women's uniforms in all of these sports that are clearly quite different from what the men get to wear. So shout out to Norway's female handball team who took the fine for wearing shorts instead of the required bikini bottoms. And Germany's women's gymnastics team, by the way,

were full leotards instead of the, you know, one-piece bathing suits. Anyway, we're here to talk about Simone Biles. So Simone Biles, after the vault in the team competition, pulled out citing mental health concerns, I found it fascinating that on Twitter, everyone went to their camps. And somehow this was partisan. Republicans far more likely to criticize Biles for not supporting her team. Democrats far more likely to praise her for, you know, self-care.

So Jonah, let me start with you. Is this because Simone Biles is a black female? Or is it because there is something fundamentally different in how Republicans and Democrats approach something like this, Republicans more duty-focused, Democrats, more individual. But that's actually the opposite of how the two parties normally interact with stuff. Yeah, I agree with you that the everyone running to their priors and their corner of stuff was grotesque on all of this, as if like some yacht sitting on his couch who like me lets out gaseous sounds just trying to get out of the couch has the right to second guess an Olympic athlete. Um, but my, um, I think, I think part of the explanation with a lot of this polarization stuff

isn't so much the facts at hand. It's that if one side has a very strong reaction, the other side has a reaction to that reaction. And so you may be right, you're probably right, that there is a more empathetic strain, particularly when it comes to sort of mental health, emotional issues among progressives, particularly progressive types on Twitter, which, you know, is a magnifier. And so the response from, I think a lot of people on the right was to their reaction more than to actually what Biles did or didn't do. And then you add in the fact that people were already revved up into a very high level

of assininity about the cops being too emotional in the hearings. And it sort of fed into this America's weak nonsense that they were already sort of worked up on. My own view is, it sounds like she did the right thing and she did it for the right reasons. And I certainly have to see no reason why to second guess, you know, her on this. She won't, you know, there's no Olympic athlete in the world that doesn't want to do really well at the Olympics. That's why they've dedicated their lives to this stuff. And for her to make this decision, which if she didn't, by her lights, would have put her in grave peril. You know, people need to just ratchet it back and say, you know, give the person some space.

This could not have been an easy decision. Even if it was a wrong decision, there's no way for someone to gainsay it given that they can't be in her head. And they're not the ones leaping off of very narrow, tiny pieces of equipment, way into the air and possibly landing on their head. Steve, you were pointing out that Eric Erickson actually tweeted, you know, hey, after learning more about the facts related to this, I've changed my mind. And you said, wow, wouldn't this be something if people approach politics the same way? Why do you think that someone like Eric was able to engage with the facts differently and sort of step back from the polarization in a way that we don't see a lot on other things? Yeah, look, I mean, I think Eric is an intellectually honest guy. I think he made a statement in haste early, sort of condemning Simone Biles and then read more and revised his opinion. I mean, in a normal political environment and in normal day-to-day life, that's what we all do.

all the time, but that's what we should all do all the time. You learn more facts. You change your opinion if your opinion needs changing. It's not very complicated. But I do think Garrett deserves credit for saying, hey, I was wrong about this? I just have to say, like, we talked about this a little bit last week. Fortunately, most of this kind of ridiculousness was confined to Twitter and a bunch of just sort of right-wing knuckle-draggers pounding their chests to looked off by condemning Simone Biles. So this is the kind of thing I think that didn't really reach a lot of normal Americans who are sitting at home watching the Olympics.

But to people who did get a whiff of this, how ridiculous must this seem? You're taking this? I mean, as Jota points out, she could be seriously injured if she can't land one of her vaults. the vaults that she was executing in the lead-up to the Olympics were things that nobody's attempted because they're so dangerous. If Simone Biles says she can't do these, for whatever reason she decides she can't do them, listen to Simone Biles. The idea that this is a political debate is one of the dumber moments in recent American history and a recent American public discourse. And it's a crowded field.

And we have been filled with really stupid debates about really stupid things. I just think if you're a normal American and you look at people in Washington or on Twitter, these sort of hyper-partisan morons taking shots and pounding their chests, you just look and think, what does it matter with these people? Do they really have so little in their own life that they feel the need to condemn an accomplished athlete like Simone Biles? because she doesn't measure up to whatever their fake standards are. It just strikes me as, again, something that doesn't require a strong opinion from people

and certainly not a strong opinion from people who have no idea what it's like to be an Olympic athlete. And while Steve is not an Olympic athlete, he certainly is the most athletic out of the dispatch podcasters. So I think I was the David. Clearly, clearly. Sarah's right Sarah is right yeah Sarah's is right this time as she was earlier as she was wrong earlier

okay I'm challenging Steve to a dispatch decathlon and let's just have at it oh no yeah I mean if there aren't a lot of endurance sports David I've got some injuries but you know I was I was athletic at one point in my life

well we all used to be lots of things Steve I think Sarah's point is I can identify with with athletes in a special way. Okay, so David, like we haven't actually gone into the facts here. She does the vault in the team competition. She doesn't do her big Biles vault. She does a Lushenko, Lukashenko, supposed to do a Lukashenko 2.5. she can only do 1.5 of the rotations. She does land without hurting herself,

but it lowers her team score. And so what she says is at that point, I could continue lowering my team score or let someone else do the rest of the events. It is insane to me. Like, I've heard people compare this to like that tennis player who pulled out after round one.

This isn't tennis. If you can hit by a ball in tennis, that's a bummer, but you don't become paralyzed for the rest of your life. I don't understand why anyone, I mean, also, it's not like Simone Biles hasn't competed for the U.S. or this is some sort of, she's the goat. She's the only person who has her own emoji, and it is of a goat doing gymnastics.

Yeah. I mean, this isn't a situation where there's even a debate about who's the goat, right? This is known that she is the goat. I mean, and it is known. I mean, she has competed with injuries before she has competed at the highest level. and won golds again and again and again and again. And one thing that's interesting sort of in following up on this, she used this term that she described called the Twisties,

which there's, all you have to do is Google that now, and there's all these explainers about what that means. It's actually kind of a term in gymnastics, where there is a, where all of a sudden everything that you're doing instinctually, you have to think it through, and you can't do that when you're, flying in mid-air. It's a phenomenon that is very scary to gymnasts.

And so she had this phenomenon that's well-known in gymnastic circles that's very scary. And so A, it's physically dangerous. B, she was hurting the team. So she pulling out was the right choice unquestionably. Like, why are people questioning like the literal goat here? and for those listeners who don't know what goat means

greatest of all time and yet there's this weird and weird and when you even say it out loud it sounds even weirder when you say it out loud on the right a cult of toughness

on Twitter on Twitter okay it's true though it's true yeah it's true there is a cult of toughness on Twitter

where a bunch of folks 90% plus of them guys, they are constantly talking about how weak people are and we're not tough anymore and they've got all of these ideas about when men should cry and when athletes should withdraw

and it's all so boring and dumb but it gets clicks, it gets engagement, I think that they kind of enjoy the idea that they are sort of tough through their tweets. I mean, this is something that's been going on for some time and really sort of rose up in the time of Trump

where fighting was equated with, or that tweeting was equated with fighting. And so it's a really low barrier of entry to fighting, right? Sarah, if that's, it's tweeting. But yeah, there's this cult of toughness. And it's absurd. It's utterly absurd, and it's so absurd that I would like to think in, say, five or 10 years

when some of these mainly young guys who are, tweeting this cult of toughness stuff, look back on it, they're going to be really embarrassed at how ridiculous it was. My heart truly breaks for Simone Biles because, you know, you spend so long, so many hours preparing for this moment and to then not be able to execute. It's obviously scary in the air when you're in that vault. But, you know, how do you think she slept last night. I'm guessing not great. And when you look at some of the interviews she was giving in the last few months, you can see that she is struggling. You know, they asked her, like, what's your favorite thing to do right now or something? And she gave this, like, very staid answer. And she said,

I don't know, I guess time off. You know, like, there was something about that that I was like, oh, God. And it's not just preparing endlessly for the competition itself. The entire Tokyo Games marketing-wise was on her back. There was no Michael Phelps. It was all Simone Biles.

And so you're getting pulled in a thousand different directions. There's all these expectations being placed on you by others on top of the expectations that you're placing on yourself because you don't get to that place unless you set your own incredibly high expectations.

So, I don't know, I just thought, like, in the quiet moments of the night, prayers out to Simone Biles, because I can't actually, unlike Steve, of course, I can't imagine what it's like to be Simone Biles today. And we should all feel incredible empathy towards someone who has represented her country so, so well for years and years and wanted so badly to do it this week. Yes. And, you know, one other thing, there were all of these people who were, saying, well, Carrie Strug was tough in 1996. And why can't Simone Biles be as tough as Carrie Strug was, which is, you know, again, this was the cult of deafness people. But then what came up was, as you looked at the old pictures and footage, who was it that was helping Carrie Strug away in 1996?

Who was it? It was the Olympic doctor, the sex abuse, sex predator, Olympic doctor, Larry Nassar. And so what you were seeing in 1996 was actually evidence of a broken system that was exploiting these young gymnasts. You were not seeing something that was a symbol of the health of American gymnastics, but you were seeing something that was a symbol of the sickness of American gymnastics and was being upheld. upheld by Twitter tough guys as sort of the paragon of strengths. And that's

not what was happening. That was a literal depiction of exploitation and predation is what we were seeing with the way in which the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team was constructed back then. And so the fact that Simone Biles had the, not just

the strength of will to be able to say with the eyes of the world on her, I can't do this. It's better for my team if I step back. she had the ability to do it, and that's progress. She had the ability to say no. That's progress here. And so I think that's one thing that's important to point out.

Well, Simone Biles, still the goat on this podcast. Amazing. She's the goat. I mean, she's the goat. Absolutely. All right. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you again next week.

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